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StarsAbove
Participating Frequently
November 24, 2024
Answered

Need help with RAW color space & Preview distortion issues

  • November 24, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 586 views

Took RAW photos with a Canon system, setting was on sRGB. My understanding is that this is applied to jpegs only. (When I open these jpegs they do show sRGB as the profile.) When opening RAW images in photoshop Camera RAW,  Photoshop labels the image (with a tag at the bottom of the photo frame) that it is Adobe RGB (1998) - 8 bit.  My Color Settings, however, are set to sRGB working space with color management all OFF.  I am prompted by the dialogue box that there is an Embedded Profile Mismatch. I have been choosing to use the embedded profile. Then, to make it more confusing, when I request File Info details of the RAW images, they show Display P3. Despite these matters,  I've been editing a large volume of RAW images from this shoot, saving the embedded color space on all of them(which were showing as P3 in file info originally), but then when I open these RAW edited images they now show the color profile as Adobe RGB. When I go to open these edited RAW files, photoshop prompts me again that there is a mismatch and I choose to keep the embedded profile to view them.  How should I be assigning a profile for these edited RAW files to give to my client? Keeping them as this apparent default Adobe RGB or converting them to sRGB? And how to do this? Does this affect the color editing I've been doing, should I be editing them as sRGB's? Next, when I create a jpeg to email my client for a quick view, and open these jpegs on my own MAC (High Sierra, Photoshop 2020), they all have awful red color discoloration on them, which has never happened to me previously and is an enormous problem as I have to provide jpegs as part of this job as well. Thank you for your help asap!

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Correct answer D Fosse

First of all, never, ever, set color management to "off" in Photoshop! You will never get consistent color. Photoshop's whole architecture is built around working color management.

 

The default policy in Color Settings is "Preserve Embedded Profiles". Return it to that setting, and don't change it again. This is how Photoshop, and all color managed software, is intended to work.

 

With this setting, the embedded color profile will override your working space. Again, this is how it's intended to work.

 

A raw file doesn't have a color space. It's encoded into one in the raw processor (the Camera Raw plugin). This is what you see directly below the image window in Camera Raw (ACR). This is the profile it embeds into the file, and this is how it will open in Photoshop. You can change this to, say, sRGB if you want.

 

The main thing with embedded color profiles isn't so much which one it is (that's a different consideration), but that there is one and it's there. It should then travel with the file and define what the numbers mean.

 

With your "off" setting, the color profile is not embedded in the file. So when you open it elsewhere, MacOS will just report whatever it has as default, which is Display P3 (and wrong).

1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
November 24, 2024

First of all, never, ever, set color management to "off" in Photoshop! You will never get consistent color. Photoshop's whole architecture is built around working color management.

 

The default policy in Color Settings is "Preserve Embedded Profiles". Return it to that setting, and don't change it again. This is how Photoshop, and all color managed software, is intended to work.

 

With this setting, the embedded color profile will override your working space. Again, this is how it's intended to work.

 

A raw file doesn't have a color space. It's encoded into one in the raw processor (the Camera Raw plugin). This is what you see directly below the image window in Camera Raw (ACR). This is the profile it embeds into the file, and this is how it will open in Photoshop. You can change this to, say, sRGB if you want.

 

The main thing with embedded color profiles isn't so much which one it is (that's a different consideration), but that there is one and it's there. It should then travel with the file and define what the numbers mean.

 

With your "off" setting, the color profile is not embedded in the file. So when you open it elsewhere, MacOS will just report whatever it has as default, which is Display P3 (and wrong).

S
StarsAboveAuthor
Participating Frequently
November 24, 2024

I cannot thank you enough for your time and expertise(I asked this question finally again this morning when I was able to find how to ask the community!). So, I just changed the color management dialogue box to Preserve Embedded Profiles, and also moving forward will save the RAW files as sRGB. Assuming this will be easiest for my client to view accurately any color edits I've made. Is this the best option, some of these photos will be professionally printed and others displayed online?  I tried opening one of these now and then telling the dialogue box to convert the profile to the working space, which is now sRGB, I saved it, closed it and thankfully it is now maintained as a sRGB file. So, this workflow is making sense now. How can I handle the multitude of RAW images I've already color edited, etc., which are now saved as Adobe RGB? Is there a way to batch convert them and if so, will my color corrections appear differently? And again, am I better off keeping all of these as Adobe RGB? Also, another problem, when I save as a jpeg (or Tiff), (sRGB files), when I open them in Preview, there is severe Red color distortion on the images. I have never experienced this problem before. Part of this job requires me to provide jpegs for the internet, (and for emailing to the client) how can I prevent this? Image attached below.

So thankful for your amazing help!

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